Quote:
Originally Posted by sir_pudding
Sure, but such systems would actually be poor rockets compared to straight antimatter rockets with gamma exhaust. Which means that you aren't going to use the same engine for lift that you use for deep space burns, or at least your engine has two modes, one with significantly poorer ISP.
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I've never seen a proposal for an antimatter rocket with gamma exhaust. The thing in Spaceships uses the short-lived charged mesons that are the first breakdown phase of matter/antimatter annihilation and magnetically sends those rearward.
The gamma rays resulting from some of the first-stage annihilations and then the meson breakdown are not used for thrust at all. This is what makes the ^Total Conversion Drive even more fuel efficient.
I'm afraid that Sir Pudding has jumped in his head to a TC drive that inconveniently emits all the converted energy as gamma rays while retaining a chemical rocket-like thrust-to-weight ratio. Not a hard science thing at all.